In her letter, Ms Goldsmith says there should be “alarm and dismay” that ancient sugar gum trees have been cut down at Lake Neangar.

However, they were a safety hazard and had to go.

Trees are unequivocally important to a human’s life, but they can be easily replaced – a human’s life cannot.

A heavy branch can do great damage if someone is walking in the wrong place at the wrong time.

All that the City of Greater Bendigo has done is cut down some trees to prevent people getting hurt and to minimise the risk of them getting sued.

In this day and age where people would sue a shoe-making company for tripping over their own shoelaces, can you blame them?

Ms Goldsmith, you dazzle us with your statistics about logging, but do you realise that “confessed, paid-up” Greenies like yourself are supporting the continual downward spiral of the Australian tourism industry and causing great grief to the ecosystem?

Read any four-wheel-driving magazine and you will realise just how restricted national parks are – do you know that the Greens plan on shutting down access to the northern-most tip of Australia at Cape York to preserve it for the next generation?

Ask yourself this: when the Greens inevitably sweep into power because Australians succumb to public relations dribble and sugar-coating politicians, do you honestly believe they will reopen all of these closed national parks?

Of course they won’t. Everything will become overgrown because animals will be removed and humans will no longer restrict the growth of the scrub with the paths they tread and an increased fire risk because of global warming.

Your argument seems to be lacking in common sense: “...shouldn’t we be at least as distressed as we are when our local council removes a few trees from our city parks and gardens?”

They removed trees from Lake Neangar, not every single city park and garden. I suggest you look at it with a pinch of salt – do you really believe the council has a hidden agenda that they want to strangle us with increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere?